It had long been said that human beings had reached a level of such comfort the only thing that could snap them out of their unconcerned haze would be an enemy soldier yanking the remote out of their hand and shooting their television. For career military officers like Admiral Benjamin Powers, this state of affairs was even more urgent. Politicians and professional meeting attenders were not only highly motivated to perpetuate comfort bubbles for their constituents, they were also likely to be heavily engaged in the business of dishonoring the men and women tasked with preserving civilian lives. One simply couldn’t have truth-tellers wearing impressive uniforms and standing in front of television cameras. Those were situations that called for delicate, or indelicate as the case may be, discretion. Or outright lying, which was apparently a far easier option for the average guest of honor at a press conference.
At the moment, the biggest challenge to getting through the day for the Admiral and key members of his staff was going to be getting into the building. The Core Council Hall was quite literally surrounded by protesters, press, crowds of onlookers, civilian police, aliens from a dozen worlds or more, hovering look-down cameras and at least several hundred automatic barricade robots deployed to politely keep 100 tons of body weight from smashing through the front doors and streaming into the corridors of power.
It had been at least a week since Core Alliance President William Baines had uttered the word “recusal” in a live address. It was a political slip-up, to be sure, but it wasn’t the hair-on-fire cataclysm the media had inflated around it. Skywatch Command and the agencies in charge of civilian military oversight had done everything in their power to keep Shea Baines out of the news, but the rumors of her abduction and the wildly inaccurate accounts of what had come to be known as the “failed” attempt to rescue her seeped into the public consciousness in ways that were almost as insidious as enemy spies. No official word had been offered regarding the events that either had or had not taken place on Mycenae Ceti Four.
The only Skywatch officers authorized to even know about Commander Annora Doverly’s mission were unwilling to answer questions, even those posed by administration chiefs with the power to declassify just about anything. The truth was, no usable transmissions had been received from the M-Ceti system. Officially, Doverly and Moody were listed as “overdue.” Unofficially and for all practical intents and purposes, they were missing in action behind enemy lines.
Jason Hunter had been ordered to account for himself, his ship and his actions in the Rho Theta and Atlantis systems by a civilian committee headed by one of president Baines’ most bitter political enemies. Within minutes, the captain had been given a direct order by Admiral Powers himself to remain silent. That standoff led directly to the hearing that was about to take place on the floor of the Core Council. The Judge Advocate General himself had threatened to intervene, but Powers had talked him down. Admiral Bartholomew James had threatened to discredit Powers publicly, but he had been driven back by Commander Skywatch’s Chief of Staff, who implied in a press conference the highest ranking military officer in the Core Alliance was considering official action to, as the press office put it, “moderate any professional disagreements in a manner consistent with the highest traditions of Skywatch.” Nobody knew for sure what the hell that meant, but it was pretty clear to the admiralty that any further posturing, especially in public, was unlikely to be tolerated. If there was one thing a man described as the “highest ranking military officer in the Core Alliance” could do, it was threaten subordinates with unimaginable wrath while sounding like he was reading the menu in a cozy Italian lunch spot.
Powers was wearing his service dress blues, colloquially known as “headquarters blues.” It was the uniform that told everyone in the vicinity something terribly military was about to take place: The kind of outfit higher ranking officers joked was common in disaster films where some gravel-voiced general is advising the president that giant radioactive praying mantis creatures from the 99th dimension were eating Cleveland with a side of pommes frites. It was one step down from “audience with the King” blues, which necessitated white gloves, swords, full-size medals and the like. Audience with the King blues were the uniform worn alongside ball gowns, the joke went. They were designed to inspire young women’s fantasies: Like eloping and fitting into glass slippers. Powers himself had been required on at least two occasions to remind doe-eyed ladies he was in fact, not a prince. Of course, that was back when he was a mere commander with half the medals and twice the hair. Nowadays he only attended proms as a chaperone or as the resident “officer who will assign you to someplace cold and forgotten” in military contexts.
As the throng moved through the huge double doors and in to the rotunda, the intensity of the lights, waving arms and the dull roar of hastily shouted questions actually seemed to intensify. The Council police, such as they were, did a serviceable job of clearing at least some kind of path for the admiral and his group, but the reporters and independent journalists made it a contest at least. Just when it seemed the admiral’s team was about to make it ten yards for a first down, the doors to the committee chamber closed. The human wave was stopped, which only elicited an even more intense roar from the surrounding onlookers. Powers waited patiently, wishing he could simply disappear into his cover like a mischievous candy store magician.
The irony, Powers thought as he examined the expensive taxpayer-funded committee chamber doors, was the ticking clock. Everything that had been placed on the record in the past three weeks was not only accurate, but dangerously accurate. Formations of starships that had not been seen since the First Praetorian War had deployed along five fronts. What had taken place was the largest and longest mobilization of fleet units in years. It was fortunate that most of it had gotten underway without the hysterical attention of the media, since the only note on their piano was “war is imminent.” In recent years it had become impossible for anyone in official circles to be subtle where Skywatch was concerned. The only time ships, crews and marines weren’t referred to as “combatants” was during parades, which were all largely ignored by the media anyway. After all, room had to be set aside for list after list of provocative headlines. Otherwise there would be nobody to advertise to!
None of this reassured the admiral. There were events afoot the media couldn’t be trusted with, at least not yet. The starship Saint Lucia had made it home. Her pursuit of Argent into the Omicron sector had been hastily classified and assigned to one of Powers’ top strategists for analysis. Commander Hilda Bayliss was many things, but delicate wasn’t one of them. She was a woman who inspired thoughts of cruel school principals, and she had the personality to match. If anyone could unravel the Omicron incident, she was it.
Admiral Hafnetz was still hospitalized with a hairline skull fracture and a concussion. Saint Lucia’s medical officer had rapidly intervened to treat a seizure Hafnetz suffered during the Achilles Task Force’s return trip. The resulting disagreement in the chain of command had required at least one threat of official reprimand. Powers knew the outbursts were partially a result of the stress from the near defeat of a ship of the line. Nevertheless, disputes over who is in charge were not tolerated in any situation, much less combat operations. Bayliss had a team of fleet specialists working on tallying the losses and analyzing the Kraken attack. Powers and Captain Kraul had quietly assigned an investigator from Skywatch Intelligence to run down the mystery of the “major” intercepted aboard Tae San just before the attack.
Powers had also requested the assistance of none other than Colonel Dorsett of the Judge Advocate General’s Corps to handle the problem of Manassas and its seeming inability to decipher the readings from the Prairie Grove system. The admiral surmised that a lieutenant colonel with the fortitude to tell a four-star admiral he is “out of line” in front of a three-star admiral is a man who needs bigger responsibilities. More than a hundred men and women had perished in the surprise Sarn fighter attack. Their complete lack of preparedness necessitated some hard questions for the forward base and its officers. There was more than a little concern one or more of those officers would be facing charges for dereliction. Yet another issue no hysteria peddler could be allowed within a light-year of. It was discouraging, to say the least. Powers’ family had numerous journalists in its ranks. The admiral had grown up around what society used to call “newspaper men.” The caliber of reporter the admiral was used to had an appetite for facts and the clear communication of same to the public. The people who called themselves “reporters” in the modern news business wouldn’t know a fact if one attached itself to their face and implanted an egg.
For the time being, Admiral James and his self-righteous pursuit of Commander Jayce Hunter had been moved to the back burner, where Powers expected it would be allowed to simmer for a time and then be quietly replaced with something relevant. The defeat of Argent’s strike fleet over Bayone was likely to be just one in a series of crucial military engagements over the coming months. That combined with the fact the Skywatch Science Division had ordered the entire ship’s complement to avoid any discussion of what had taken place in and around the Achaen system, or what the battleship’s delinquent senior officers had apparently invented in the meantime meant there were at least three entire sections of Skywatch Command dedicated to making certain the only things Argent’s crew were allowed to discuss were, in fact, the menus at that out-of-the-way Italian place.
The Sarn Empire, the Kraken Decarchy, the Yersian Unity and a faction with ships made of a substance that seemed to directly affect spacetime were all on a wartime footing. Each had opened fire on at least one Skywatch warship in the last ten days. Jason Hunter’s battleship had been driven from El Rey by forces responsible for the total destruction of Flotilla 29 and Vance Drake’s command. Somewhere out there, in six trillion cubic miles of space, Marine Signals Company Eleven was stranded behind enemy lines.
The idea that a Council committee would take the time to investigate the actions of a battleship captain without so much as a nod towards the dozens of flag officers and thousands of support staff responsible for that battleship captain’s duties was both unusual and ominous. It was the kind of thing that reminded experienced officers about those times when misguided leaders turned appeasement into disaster. The house was on fire. The fact enemy forces were still 40 light years away did not reassure Skywatch admirals. The fact the Sarn “wouldn’t dare” attack a civilian target didn’t inspire thoughts of peace for Skywatch admirals. Powers knew what was coming, and that clock was still ticking.
Finally the doors opened, revealing another wall of lights, recording devices and shouting people. Powers began making his way to his assigned place facing the 11 members of the Core Council Subcommittee on Military Affairs. By the looks of things, it was going to take at least six hours to travel the ten yards to the table.
First down.